A $9 rescue stick that tells you what's wrong.

Boot a broken Linux machine from a USB drive. It runs fully offline, backs up before it touches anything, and a local AI reads the evidence and names the failure in plain words. You confirm every step. It never executes anything on its own.

$9one time — yours forever. No subscription, no recurring charge.

I have read and accept the disclaimer and terms of use — version 1 is a proof of concept, the USB drive is erased, I back up first, the AI can be wrong and I confirm every step, no warranty. I confirm I am 18 years of age or older

18+ · one $9 charge · checkout by Stripe · no account needed · the download link comes by email and appears right here after payment

Fully offlineNo links up, no addresses, nothing listening — checked at every boot and shown on the screen.

Never deletesIt backs up first and keeps the copy on the machine. The runbook runs only allowlisted commands: no shell, no delete, no format, no raw-device write.

Explains, then waitsThe AI reads the evidence, names the scenario, and explains what it sees. A person confirms every step.

Signed and reproducibleTwo independent builds produced a byte-identical system. That hash is signed, and the signature ships with the download.

What it is

This is the first, smallest version we could prove. You download one image file (5.8 GB compressed; 8 GB once written to a USB drive you own), write it to the drive, and boot the broken computer from it. The screen is a recovery console. If it sees something outside its proven list it says so and hands you the evidence bundle to give to a person.

Proven, end to end, offline, on Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04

a boot loop from a custom start-up rule
a missing disk in fstab
SSH keys refused by permissions
a locked root password
a full disk
an encrypted or LVM volume that will not open
a system folder overwritten by a backup tool — the failure that took our own server down twice; this version exists because of it

The finished image was booted on EFI firmware and diagnosed a broken system from inside its own boot: it read the evidence and answered "locked root password" — correct — in about eleven seconds.

What it will not do (version 1)

Repair GRUB/EFI, rebuild RAID, recover deleted files, or touch macOS or Windows. Version 1 keeps the machine offline by bringing no network up and running no network services; a firewall layer arrives in version 1.1.

How it compares

Rescue sticks are free but assume you're the expert. Recovery suites cost $89–$150 and recover files from a disk that still reads — they don't diagnose a system that won't boot. Nothing we found does what this does, offline, at any price.

product	what it is	price	explains the failure
RecoveryOne	bootable stick + on-board AI diagnostician + allowlisted runbook	$9 once, no subscription	yes
SystemRescue · Clonezilla · Rescuezilla	free rescue toolkits; you drive every command	free	no
Boot-Repair-Disk	fixes GRUB/EFI boot loaders	free	one job only
Disk Drill	file recovery	$89	no
Stellar Data Recovery	file recovery	$69.99/yr · $129	no
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard	file recovery	$99.95/yr · $149.95	no
R-Studio	file / RAID recovery	$49.99–$79.99	no
Acronis True Image	backup + rescue media	$49.99–$124.99/yr	no

Prices read from the vendors' pages and dated 2026 reviews on 2026-08-29.

Verify what you downloaded

Download: vox-recovery-stick.img.zst — SHA-256 b0767a3fd326a34d5d9d8c36ffa409c8a80f7fbb8bd99193a257d9d41126c7f7 (5,771,827,569 bytes). Decompressed image: 8,589,934,592 bytes. Release key ed25519 SHA256:/AC3ztcfYwZ2lMbJ4Ut7qTWZ5H0rkW3vHGlzIrPD6VY. Proof files: manifest.

ssh-keygen -Y verify -f allowed_signers -I vox-recovery -n vox-recovery-stick \
  -s RELEASE.sha256.sig < RELEASE.sha256
sha256sum -c RELEASE.sha256

Writing the drive

Any USB drive of 8 GB or more; everything on it is erased. Decompress the download (zstd -d vox-recovery-stick.img.zst), then write vox-recovery-stick.img to the drive with balenaEtcher (macOS · Windows · Linux) or dd. Boot the broken computer from that drive in EFI mode; the recovery console appears on the screen with no login.

$9, one time, yours forever — there is no subscription for this product. You are buying the current version with its limits stated above. Read the disclaimer and terms of use before you buy and again before you boot a machine from the stick. Questions or a link that doesn't work: hello@voxordo.io from the address you bought with. Made by InSync Tech — voxordo.io · StudioStock — stock video from $1 a clip.